I mentioned radio last time, but I got distracted by something uninteresting.
Back at Air America, the good old days, when Al Franken wasn’t fumbling through a comedy bit with no end but whose punchline was probably “Mission Accomplished” and Randi Rhodes wasn’t howling at the moon across four commercial breaks because a local reporter somewhere once misspelled her name or Dick Cheney wore an ugly coat to someone’s funeral, a nut called Ed Schultz would step up and across political lines and prove that deep down, we’re all human. Despite a few fundamental disagreements (I would assume), he’s every bit as simplistic and pushy as Sean Hannity, who I believe it was that shared the timeslot on another station. Some days I would get in the car and I couldn’t tell which it was, since the driver was relatively openminded about things. Though I suppose “relatively” is relative (as was the driver, to me), since you don’t get a job in radio to listen to other people’s opinions, do you.
I had to plug my ears when someone called the program, because I didn’t want to hear the host cut off the caller, obviously miss the point and declare himself right, or, even worse, have the person agree with Sean/Ed totally.
The only way I could tell when it was Ed Schultz was when the ads told me to go to Office Depot. Sean Hannity’s sponsors wanted me to invest in Office Depot.
Or rather, they wanted me to invest in gold. GOLD.
That’s when you know you have too much money. A miser on a budget has to be content with hoarding actual gold. You’re so over your wealth, you’re in such a hurry that you just like throwing money at the idea of gold. An ad for gold came on when I was writing this. (I typed it later (and showed it to you much later))
I really need to manage my time better.
Could we stop with the u2 greatest hits? No? We can’t?
How long must we sing this song? I don’t know, that’s up to you, buddy. Unless this is some kind of torture technique. How long must we sing this song? Until you TALK, that’s how long.
I heard that song on WLIR 105.7. The WOLRD FAMOUS WLIR 105.7
They’re not messing around. All over de waruld, despite every other radio station in the country playing the same songs, wlir is known for being… just for being. People in Borduria are setting up satellite systems to intercept the signals. You can buy pirate tapes of it in China.
All that and a side of onion rings holds true for the Clam Castle. Surely you have heard of it, so I will not even explain it. The residing monarchs, the astounding clams with eyes on the outsides of their shells, they attract spectators and scholars from across this planet and others.
Across the road, Pip’s arcade, AyKayAy whatever Boring Souldraining White-Collared Place of Business 367028 is calling itself these days. I miss having an arcade nearby. So many memories. This was the place where two thugs I never saw before or again swindled me out of fifty cents by praising my skill with Captain America & The Avengers. Fifty whole cents! It was all the money I had in the world at the time. I don’t think I even got to level three. I really wish you hadn’t brought this up.
Mike Birbiglia is coming out in a few minutes. If he does his Busta Rhymes set again I’m turning mine off.
Ah, good. He didn’t. He did use some other jokes I’ve heard before, however. I’m not sure if my life is pointless because I watch too many tv shows or because it’s too easy for me to connect to the internet.
We (“we” being me plus at least one other person) went through a few Nintendo Entertainment Systems in the old days. All the dust particles that built up due to the machine’s cartridge door being held open by the object also holding the game down because the spring-lock was broken probably did not help. Lincoln logs, legos, Sega Genesis games, many items held the honor of this holding. Various “game cleaning” devices may also have found at last a legitimate use in this role.
The games themselves similarly suffered. There were some, like Air Fortress, which always worked, either due to disuse or simple irony, but the older ones were a different delaware. I actually had mapped out in my mind which glitch patterns and colors meant Legend of Zelda was how close to starting up properly. A blank blue screen was bad. That was the furthest from function. I knew when it started being gray and occasionally showing white dashes it was almost working. The NES we got later, unfortunately, defaulted to a blank grey screen so it was really hard to know how much more blowing needed to be done. We had to replace the first NES, as I said, because its spring-lock broke. Its door had also broken, but that didn’t really matter since that wouldn’t stay closed while the game was being held down. Though the second’s spring also broke, we were cautious enough to see that the door remained intact. By that time we had moved on to leaving control devices in stupid places and letting them get stepped on. Big kid stuff. (that’s noise)
Good old Legend of Zelda. This was the version without the “hold reset or lose data!” warning.
This warning was added to the later issues of the game without the gold cartridges, which has me mystified, as it doesn’t look at all expensive to have produced. All the more mystifying is that the absense of silence, which is also golden, ought to have resolved any budgetary issues. Perhaps this is golden wisdom.
There were some graphic errors with which the game was playable, like vertical white lines, and others which I knew not to bother with, like the horizontal orange lines which gradually spread from the upper left corner to cover the whole screen. My cousin Patrick called that “the ozone layer,” and I never questioned it. I don’t think I ever questioned a thing he told me, even though 53.7% of it was rubbish, and that’s a bit more than half. I believe it was from a friend of his that I learned the “blow in the cartridge” trick. You know, that great trick that never worked one time. We did that for six years.
It’s impossible to say to what extent this sort of thing contributed to my lifelong fear of being sent to prison. Incidentally, Patrick also told me that the creature with wings is named The Guy Who Flies With His Pants On. It makes sense; why fly with your pants off, if you have pants?
Different games had different diseases, but all suffered from the ozone layer. It is a good thing I never heard that aerosol sprays “depleted ozone” until later, as I would probably have found myself emptying those directly into cartridges in lieu of plain inefficient mouth-driven air and thought myself quite clever. Mmmm.
Sometimes there would be “good” lines at the start, but then ozone would slowly start sneaking in. Of course I was always in denial about it. I would pretend not to notice it, and hope that it would go away. Alas, ozone is all around us, and is in all places at all times, so it really cannot go anywhere. Even if it could, Ozone Road was a mere two blocks from my place of business, Olympus Battling business, so its fearsome layer could return before long. It did.
There was a period when I was just grateful to get a certain intendo tape, as the people I liked less liked to say more, working for a few minutes. There was one Metroid password that I entered so many times that I actually memorized it and no longer needed to consult the birth certificate or Abraham Lincoln autographed picture I had written it over. It wasn’t even a good password. I think it had one energy tank and fifteen missiles, in the second part of Norfair without the high-jump boots.
BOOTS, I said! Why, in a situation which involved boots, and you had space on the screen to print “boots,” would you not do so? I guess I’m just old.
Newer Legend of Zelda cartridge side-by-side with picture I found online of older Legend of Zelda. Obviously taken by an amateur, who set it up in an environment with minimal light reflection or whatever, so the precious metal exterior just resembles plastic painted to be a goldish color.
Newer Legend of Zelda side-by-side with earlier picture I took depicting itself and gold cartridge picture. Despite the tape issue, not I nor anyone I had or yet have met called these things “carts.” I remember getting an occasional issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine between 1992 and 1996 and wondering what video games had to do with driving around in little mechanical cars or transporting groceries.
I also wondered if Mike Weigand was really a Battletoad.
How Blackthorne could be “game of the month” in any situation had not yet occurred to me to ponder. I mean, you can’t even draw your gun when climbing up a ledge. I hate that. For shame!
Oh, and Gary Coleman did own an arcade at the time this magazine was printed, but I assure you Mike thought he was being every bit as hilarious dropping the name then as he would today.
Over the summer I’ve seen a lot of whining about the planned Geico cavemen tv show, and thankfully very little support, but a point a lot of people fail to acknowledge is that if the men don’t live in caves they’re not really cavemen. That’s bothered me ever since that second ad which showed three of them sharing an apartment together. Just the fact that the first one was an ad, naturally, bothered me, but the cave error itself did not become evident until later. Clearly the krippendorfs aren’t in a cave, so what are they so offended by? They’re just excessively hairy men with oddly shaped skulls, aren’t they? Unless they lived in caves recently, they can’t really claim it as part of their culture any more than I can. And if they did live in caves, like whole communities of them, just because they didn’t know any better, then they probably were kind of stupid, and likely lacked the computer skills the offending fake geico ad-within-an-ad implied they did not have.
How about Aliens in America? That has to be the worst tv show I swore long in advance never to watch with “Aliens in” in the title since Aliens in the Family. I’m personally tired of goofish overdone Indian accents. I don’t know how authentic this one is, but it certainly sounds a lot like the fake ones I’m sick of. In one ad the Indian, from India, a largely (but not entirely!) Hindu country, praises “Allah,” and over something trivial, so… yesh, probably expect some letters, in the event anyone watches.
Another one I suspect less than the best from is every one. But specifically, there’s one just called Chuck. I will no longer tolerate no good oafs with no skills getting by on dumb luck all the time. Inspector Gadget, while illegally retarded had gimmicks and tricks; all Chuck has is his name. MacGyver, that was someone worth paying attention to. Chuck’s just “Chuck,” a name intentionally chosen to highlight how ordinary and low class the twerp is. Chuck is Everyman. I hate Everyman. Not every man, just everyman. There are decent men in the world, why does the one which represents all of them have to be a useless slob? I’ve never watched the Family Guy, not even when one of my personal idols Robert Bunny James II told me it was great, not even before all the popular people who hate it started saying so, but I easily can see that Family Guy himself is the least interesting person on the show named after him. The Kings of Queens and The Hill seem to barely not live out of dumpsters. What the gives?
Back to Chuck, Chuck meets a woman who is a spy, apparently good at what she does, and not a realistic spy, either; one of those action spies that does neat things, but of course the show can’t be named after or about her. And if it was it would have to be like an E Surance ad anyway, and no one smart wants that. Ideally this program will be canceled before woman disgraces her entire family and Everywoman (as portrayed by Chaka Kahn) by doing sex with Chuck. There’s also a movie called “Good Luck Chuck” which for all I know is about the same Chuck. I need less chuck in my life. If you tossed all them chucks in a wagon, I wouldn’t chase it.
I told you no! Help! Rape! Rape!
In short, I’m not impressed by ads for anything new, and I don’t want to be, since I watch too much junk anyway.
I also gratefully feel uninclined to observe Back to You. You (and I mean whatever “you” happens to be reading this, and not necessarily the same you addressed in the television program’s title) know, I never get tired of sabotaged teleprompter jokes. Ha ha, see, local news anchors, they’ll read anything you put in front of them, get it? Because people on local newses are dumb. That’s why they’re local. Not network news, though. Serious Business. Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, Terry Moran, Not Peter Jennings, Bob Costas, they’re professionals. Then there’s the Kelsey Grammer factor, which I’ve whined about plenty of times. Maybe he’s become less annoying in his time off a regular series. I may not even resent Back to You if it’s successful. Who knows, it may find itself added in future printings of National Lampoon’s Sunday Newspaper to the list of productions it swears ripped it off. But probably not! Exclamation point
Here’s how to know if you’re a conceited ass: you’ve ever referred to something you did in the past as a “Rosetta Stone.” I might as well call Umiliphus the Rosetta Stone of hacky celebrity cameos in sprite comics. That is, unless you can prove the ones with Bill Gates came first or that CATS from Zero Wing is a celebrity.
As unlikely as it is that some guys made some thing in the 1970s and then got suddenly re-involved 25 years later just to fellate their careers on the back cover of a book version, it’s not impossible to believe. Anyway, the word “lampoon” always made me mad.
By the rourke, don’t try and convince me two people are comedic geniuses and then tell me one works for Rolling Stone magazine and another wrote The Breakfast Club. I realize you already did and it’s too late to change that, but for the future just keep my words in mind. I’m glad we had this chat.
The Dapsy Dino Family. They are one series of collectible figurines out of… too many. They were at one point found inside little plastic eggs which could be purchased in many countries besides this one. And I guess people bought them.
While I pointed out in the past that a certain pair of crocs were most certainly not cool, it is only fair to mention that their honorable ancestor Dribbelino was also not cool. Or at least not as much as any of the
CHiNESE-BEAVER. You may know them better as
les de CHiNEE-CHiN. I must give special recognition to SAM URAI, bridging cultural stereotype boundaries by naming himself after one of the outdated things westerners habitually associate with Japan instead. What we learn here is that it’s not insensitive to depict Asian people as having ridiculous over-bites if you imagine them as animals which look like that anyway. It might also help to choose one that’s known to inhabit parts of Asia, but I may just be misinformed in my belief that these aren’t. For some reason I’m hesitant to investigate any of the results for my “asian beaver” google search. But anyway.
There’s simply no comparison to be made.
As for why Dribbelino is spinning volleyballs, traditionally neither subjects of dribbling nor spinning upon limited surfaces in attempts to impress onlookers, that is yet a mystery.
By the roy, DAPSY DINOS should not be confused with
DROLLY DINOS, who don’t delude themselves into thinking they know how to dress properly.
Huh? Hweh? What’s that? Ah, you are observant.
FANNY FITNESS is indeed connected to an apparatus called LADY SHAKER. I’m glad you noticed.
Getting back to my original point, I think the croc’s problem was that they misrepresented themselves. While throughout time evidence has proven that crocs cannot be cool, they can be CRAZY.
Ever in denial, the CRAZY CROCOS tried to convince me that I’m the crazy one, that it’s somehow my problem, that oh no, that’s just the way things are in the city, for
CITY CROCOS. Sure, pal. Everyone knows CONNY CRAZY is not named LISA RAP. That would be stupid. Obviously I wasn’t having that so I sent them promptly back to
KROKOSCHULE to learn better manners.
I’ve made a couple jokes at the expense of the characters’ names, but no one can touch
CROCOCROK. Why would you want to?
Next week: SQUALIBABA meets a whale on a toilet. Or probably not.
As for Capital Eli himself, his scary website uses the same logo but says very little about the soda and seems primarily intended to exhibit a too-small javascript window comic strip with fairly unreadable text (And these days my preferred screen resolution of 1024×768 is considered to be at the low-end). Imagine Bazooka Joe with delusions of magnificence, except you have to go to a website to see it, and you probably won’t because it’s scary, and even if you do you won’t know what’s going on. The Shipyard Brewing Company, which makes the soda, likewise does not mention the comic strip on its own website. Through it, though, you can order a box of twelve twelve twelve twelve ounce Eli Capitan soda bottles for $34.95, barely a bargain over what I paid for one, and we have no guarantee that they are full bottles.
For the picture stories is offered an email subscription service, even though it started in 2004 and not 1994. I presume this brings forth bigger, readabler pages, but I’m only presuming that and that it wouldn’t affect past “””webisodes,””” though I doubt they’re all that good anyway.
The character artwork appears passable enough –considering that the “meet the artist” page includes mumble mumble co-creator mumble internationally distributed mumble *cough* mumble mumble world¹s first disabled superheroes, The Scrap City Pack Rats, we probably could do worse. And verily that’s a tiny 1 instead of an apostrophe–
Ehhh! So the drawings don’t seem all that terrible, though if you’re bringing out the lame photoshop filler techniques for your cover image I have to question your dedication to quality, especially if the best backdrop you can find looks like
Doom II’s ASHWALL4 colored blue. Sure, GRAYPOIS or SP_DUDE7 would have been worse, but I prefer to discuss what could be done to improve things. For example, Doom has plenty of pretty sky graphics that would work.
As for hokey, noncomplex computer graphic models, I nominate that we save those for CBS News simulations of planned NASA missions. There’s really no sense to it if its non animated.
But I’m being unfair, as often happens. The effects on the inside, generally, are much better…
those people, however, are starting to freak me out. I concede that numerous online comic strips have utilized similar artistic anti-methods for humorous effect, and sometimes even succeeded, but this here is not meant to be funny, I don’t think. Though Eeleye is an apparent orphan, his plight was not brought about by a bright green tyrannosaurus stepping on his house, that’s all I’m saying.
Me, I may not be able to piece together a coherent story, I may not be capable of incorporating realistic, relate-to-able issues, I may not be able to read books on philosophy long enough to find the good non-sequitur fodder, I may not be able to draw a straight line, but by gummybear I’ll take hours and hours to get anything done. I pledge this to you.
Someone who appears to be the same author has uploaded a promotional clip through the youtube. In addition to being animated in the slightest, it features inappropriate use of one of my favorite musics, Gustav Holst’s (watch out, this is more noise) Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity.
But I still prefer that to using music I hate and that has words in it unrelated to the visual content. I have filed the proper information requests with Neldo Headquarters to confirm that I do officially feel that way.
The site claims its “saga” begins in this story, although below it there is another one labelled as “first,” evidently by a different author. One who could draw backgrounds. One who could, but gave up on it a few pages in.
It’s hard to say if replacing this person was worth the trouble.
Capt’n Eli’s Lemon Lime soder. That’s Capt’n Eli, not Cap’n Eli or, yikes, Captain Eli. Then we’d be in a fix, all right. Capt, like those stupid tests I used to have to take at school.
When I asked for this beverage at Boothbay Harbor’s notorious Wannawaf, the only establishment I had ever seen it offered, the serving person seemed appalled. As if she wanted to say “why not just get Mountain Dew? It’s two dollars less and the bottles are bigger.” I didn’t know my soda cost two dollars more; the sign simply stated “bottled soda: $1.00.” It did not say “popular bottled soda: $1.00, struggling regional bilge: $whatever we tell you”
For the record, this record, Capt‘n Ellis wasn’t as good as green Foxon Park soda, which is cheaper and available in towns with good pizza, but plenty better than Mountain Dew. I don’t know if it was necessarily two dollars better, but it was the only public soft-drink I had the whole week I was in Maine, if I don’t count un-pre-sweetened iced teas, and I didn’t. Booth Bay Harbor is Pepsi country. The only Coca-Cola I saw was in the few non-Pepsi vending machines or ah Rite Aid. I may have been partly grateful at the lack of temptation to place such horrible things inside me, but, oh, such a fool I was! I didn’t realize how health beneficial Coke drinking was.
Whether it’s your first coke of the day, or your second, or your thirteenth, experts agree soda contains liquid ingredients. Apparently a study into the harmful effects of soda was commissioned after people drinking soda experienced harmful effects. Which is ridiculous. As long as you keep pouring it down your neck pipes, the inside of you won’t have time to dry up.
Wannawaf, for your further information, has, as its specialty, ice cream served upon warm, soft belgium style waffles. It’s the sort of thing that local publications, well to do residents and dopey tourism guides will praise whenever prompted as being a unique and wonderful highlight of the area, something so wonderful that only doesn’t expand internationally out of humility and the belief that its personal signature attention to quality cannot be maintained on such a grand scale.
In actuality, though, at least from the one I had, the waffle and the ice cream both would have tasted better separate and I already told you the clerk didn’t leave me feeling oh so welcome. So I don’t, in fact, wannawaf! PWAH HAH HAH HAF HIF HIF HURRR… (weep). I guess this is for people who eat chocolate chip pancakes and chocolate steaks and chocolate whatever the Funk and Wagnalls else other things shouldn’t be made with chocolate.
Oh, oh, and I finally had a look/hear at that stupid “chocolate rain” bit all the popular people assume I’ve already had several looks/hears at, and I don’t understand. The tune is five seconds long and seems to repeat endlessly. I say seems because I couldn’t stand to listen for four whole minutes regardless of what absurd mass-quotable nonsense Mr. Zay Taydon Potate Bacon or whoever is zaying. I gave up less than half way through. Sure, I’d show that to everyone. Great job giving another moderately talented bozo a career, Internet! I tried listening to another of the man’s songs, and it seemed an improvement, but again I lacked the endurance to see/hear it through. And I made this, for the sake of snakes.
I’ve drawn some embarrassing pictures over the years, and I hide them, but it occurs to me that when I get sent to crazy prison, for good this time, my personal archaeologists will probably be amused/horrified a lot more by all the stupid, simple, mundane things I never got rid of. Hopefully my 1991 Nintendo Power magazines will be gone by then.
There is a bag of “flavor twists” fritos in front of me which for whatever reason I didn’t finish, and I’m sure they must be stale by now, but I can’t see to their disposal until I check for certain. I keep thinking “well, the ones below the surface might not be totally stale yet, so…” and then I leave it there some more. As I type, or rather inbetween bursts of that, I am emptying several Wendy’s salt packlets into a larger container.
I’ve too often heard the warning: “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Aren’t I meant to judge a book by its cover? If the cover bears a picture and a title? Even if the author did not choose and even hated the cover image, whoever did pick it up intended that I get some idea from it. So there.
You could judge an audio book by an audio cover, but there aren’t audio covers! Sometimes I will awake with a thought that seems terribly profound, and will insist on writing it somewhere immediately. On one occasion the thought was about audio books. And there you are.
I love reading April editions of magazines in March. It’s like looking into the future. Otherwise, why the elk are they labelled like that? It’s a bit like when I go to an Australian website and it tells me the time is 10 am the next day. I’m just kidding, of course. I hate magazines.
Why, on keyboards, is O so close to 0? That needlessly complicates things.
Did Jackson Pollock have a washing machine, or did he sell all his paint-soiled clothes? If he did that, he could easily afford to buy new ones.
Not only does the Bat-Man lack superpowers, the fake ears are an increased liability
My pain is magenta.
Few phrases make me less want to eat than “mouth-watering.” I’ve never known there to be so many ads in circulation at the same time using that line. I’ve heard it for steak, for gum, and for beer, but one of these days it’s going to be made to refer to a thing I’d actually want, and then I’m not going to anymore. I know plant watering means to pour water into a plant. How am I supposed to eat food when some twunk is standing over me with a watering can?
Is there a better phrase for “watering can?” It sounds like the name of an Asian cartoon series that has nothing to do with watering cans and that actual English speaking fans refuse to acknowledge sounds retarded.
Watering Can Scuba W: Remember me Densely
At least motel Ramada is better than hotel Rwanda
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11-29-2011: this one hid from the robots for a long time!
Like most of the “interactive” internet, My-space has let me down and I hate it, and so I log in to it less than once a week, yet I’ve seen about five of these.
I’m not sure what about Dennis Kucinich supposedly makes him so much more ridiculous and “unelectable” than anyone else, –and it’s not that he has a myspace page either, because all of them do– but I will say that even the year in his logo goes too far. Also, if that enormous flag behind him is properly masted and flowing freely, then Dennich must able to fly. And why not? He’s a magical forest spright, after all. Is that so wrong?
He brings great things to the world.
More dumb comics.
This may seem to drag on, but I personally deem it preferable to squeezing a novel’s worth of dialogue on to one page. In fact, it may still be too crowded. Bah.
Why does internet explorer put big pink frames around all my picture links? I hate that.
American Idol Rewind: nevermind why it’s on four months after the show was supposed to be over for the year, why does it exist at all? Traces of AI (it works on several levels, I guess) are on every friggin’ night on every channel during the stuff, constantly recapping, uncapping and building model ships inside everything. Who, that’s interested, could possibly not know everything by now? There are things we still don’t know Richard Nixon did, but only because he didn’t want us to know. The American Idols want you to know. And you want to know about them. Pay attention! It’s a lot cheaper than paying for their albums! And probably only slightly more harmful to your mental well-being. The sooner you soak this up, the sooner society can rinse it out or some clever simile-metaphoric language like that. See, it’s bringing me down, too.
People still buy albums, right? I’m not supposed to take “I Tunes” seriously, am I? Whatever happened to audio cassettes? Those were neat. Hey, want to come over and watch Gremlins on my new VCR? I had to buy a new one after my Vectrex overheated and caught fire again. That’s some serious processing power. You may think me old fashioned, but this show has rewind in its name. I bet it throws to commercial with “stay tuned!”
Speaking of the early 1980s, this person goes back there for haircuts. I’m sure while this person was popular I got sick of that joke really fast, but thankfully I have forgotten. I wish I could forget everything, but Rewind’s not about to let that happen. I can’t remember when my mother’s birthday is, but I’ll always remember that Justin Guarini kind of looks like Richard Simmons.
“Exclusive 2006 interview.” So this isn’t even about the most recent atrocities. And it’s on for an hour. Then it’s on again. Are these people truly so fascinating? Even the guy being interviewed looks bored. He also appears to be bleeding from his scalp, so I probably shouldn’t make assumptions based on one picture. Alas, this is the only picture on my entire hard drive of this person, so I have no choice but to believe he’s either just been shot or had a poorly executed lobotomy. Someone with good aim could do both.
Justin’s a “he,” right?